Nokia Oyj. (HEL:NOK1V) is still financially recovering from a dismal 2011, but its sacrifice may be worth it. The rejuvenated company is turning heads with sleek smartphone designs like the Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 Windows Phones.

Now one of its top executives has made the rumors (virtually) official -- it will enter the tablet market later this year.

I would love one of these things, but in an x86 flavor over ARM. I like Metro (even though it needs some work, its not even at V1 yet) but I am not ready to go all in on metro and ditch the desktop experience I have known my whole life.

I would rather have an i5 based tablet and live with worse battery life, but know i could use it as a full on Windows machine.

Why not get one of the various touch screen tablet PCs out there then and put Win8 on it? I want to get a new tablet but I've been holding out for a Win8 variety so I'm very eagerly anticipating any release news.

Sadly "any tablet" won't due.If you're referring to the arm flavor the current crop, they prob won't have driver's released for win8 (arm edition), though if the hardware is supported a rom community might spring fourth . . .

Realistically though its a very locked down platform in terms of ARM hardware.

As for x86, nothing on the market at the moment worth getting."i" series tablets are heavy and/or battery restricted, depending on what compromises you're willing to make.

Atom on the other hand . . . well lets just say its a bit under powered for an x86 option but to power hungry to compare to arm. Fortunately this should change with the Clover Trail platform. x86 perks with less of the power hit = less of a trade off.

Moral of the story - win 8 is a next gen OS and will not benefit as a tablet until next gen hardware is released (and manufacturers are timing thing to ensure exactly that!)

Almost forgot - Ivey Bridge "i" series tablets should also improve on the power/weight ratio issue. So again, next gen hardware to better fit the usage model.

Emphasis on should . . .

As Intel's next gen process ramps up lower power chips will be released. This being a "tick" a die shrink on the same basic architecture will mean lower thermals and power at a reasonable clock speed. Its just a matter of how quickly the process matures.(Sorry folks, physics is going to get in the way of 3.4ghz at 10watts, but >1ghz at 13 watts will still be incredible.)

The tablet you want already exists. Samsung has a few models to choose from. People don't buy them because they are too expensive, have poor battery life, and don't perform well enough. You aren't suddenly going to get superior performance and a cheaper price simply because it is running Windows 8. If you want a $500ish tablet it's going to be running an ARM CPU or it's going to be a hunk of junk.

Love the metro. I have installed W8 Consumer preview on my Asus Slate EP121 and it works great. Downloading apps is a breeze and I can RDP on our Terminal Server. What i love the most is switching apps. Just one slide and it opens another apps that are running. Boot up time is less than than 10 seconds. =

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